Blog  Thought and Opinion  Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments

Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments

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We tend to feel we're more able and smarter than we really are. We think we're above average drivers, we're above average investors, and we make better decisions than everyone else.

According to a recent study, this occurs, in part, because we “suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it.”

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”

The study goes on to make several key points:

In many domains in life, success and satisfaction depend on knowledge, wisdom, or savvy in knowing which rules to follow and which strategies to pursue.

People differ widely in the knowledge and strategies they apply in these domains with varying levels of success. Some of the knowledge and theories that people apply to their actions are sound and meet with favorable results.

When people are incompetent in the strategies they adopt to achieve success and satisfaction, they suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it.

The authors come to the conclusions that the skills we need to have competence in any domain are often the same skills we need to accurately evaluate competence. The better we are at something, the better we're able to judge ourselves. Because of this, incompetent individuals often exaggerate their ability more than competent ones.